


Secrets

by Forsteri



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drinking & Talking, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-04 06:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13358142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Forsteri/pseuds/Forsteri
Summary: His friends joked that Veritaserum would take one look at him before throwing up its hands and giving it up as a bad job.





	Secrets

His friends joked that Veritaserum would take one look at him before throwing up its hands and giving it up as a bad job.

Remus loved secrets, horded them like a Muggle dragon would horde its jewels. (Funny, isn’t it, what Muggles will think of? Dragons and nifflers got all mixed up in their mythology, resulting in odd little creatures that just aren’t correct at all.) (Well, not _little_ , precisely.) He guarded them, cherished and protected them, kept them so sheltered and shielded that often you couldn’t tell he was looking after the secrets at all. He’d had lots of practice, after all.

The biggest secret he ever kept was the one that started it all. Before, he had been a normal little boy, babbling thoughts and brilliant inventions to anyone who cared to listen, several who didn’t, and even to some who didn’t exist. He didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘secret’ Before. But After- well, he learned quickly. He saw the looks, heard the words that were never quiet enough to stay away from his ears. Feelings became ‘fine,’ thoughts quietly mentioned only on rare occasions, inventions left to rust and disintegrate in the dusty annals of his brain. He was sad, lonely, distrusting. Miserable, even. But his secret- the first, the biggest, the only one he had back then- was safe.

_I am a werewolf._

As he grew, so did his secret. It grew up and around him, a weed in a gently tended garden, surrounding and stunting the good things it encompassed. Others tried to pull his secret away from him- left him shivering, shaking, ill, broken, more miserable than ever, clutching his secret as tight as he could because it might hurt him but people hurt him more. His parents spoke at him. He listened, keeping his opinions silent. His parents decided. His thoughts stayed inside. They left, resurfaced in an ordinary little town in an ordinary little county, appearing quite ordinary themselves. His secret was under layers of safeguards, isolation covered by an unpleasant veneer, buried under calm, quiet gazes and concealed by deflection. No one learned. It was finally safe.

The secret had become larger and harder to hide when he was offered a chance at normalcy. It was still his only secret, but he would have to strip away some of his safeguards if he wanted to pretend to be wizard-normal. Normal, after all, is relative, and Muggle-normal was a rather different thing. Easier, he thought, than this new half-foreign concept of wizard-normal, when so many other wizard-normal boys and witch-normal girls and magic-normal professors would be observing him closely for any sign of oddities. He gently pulled his secret out from the unpleasantness and isolation, added more unassuming appearances, extra deflections and some flat-out lies, went back to the sneeze-worthy archives and invented some kind questions about _you, you’re much more interesting, after all._

It worked for a year and a half, when he allowed the lack of isolation to make his secret-keeping sloppy. That too-bright day in early spring, he gained his second secret.

_James, Sirius, and Peter know._

He kept this secret as well as he could, for he was not practiced in the art of tandem secret-keeping and so had to find new ways to accomplish a very familiar task. Some of the professors suspected, for his dear friends were not the subtlest bunch, less practiced at secrets and more likely to give themselves away. But all four were as loyal as any Hufflepuff and as cunning as any Slytherin. When it was time to lie, they did so without hesitation, stutter, or hint of illicit knowledge. There may have been suspicions, but never more than that. And his kind, mad, amazing friends then contributed his third secret.

_They are extremely illegal underage Animagi._

(Really, it was amazing how loyal they were to each other. Like brotherhood. They should have been in Hufflepuff. Would have been, possibly, if it hadn’t been for a mad addiction to adrenaline, a desire to be violently and outstandingly different, a determination to conquer the overwhelming fears, and a Secret.)

The third secret panicked and thrilled him. It was terror competing with joy as they both raced speeding through his bloodstream and drowned the howls with uncontrollable human laughter.

It was his first secret that truly wasn’t his. He fumbled with its clean edges and defined lines, for never in his experience had a secret been so neatly delineated. Secrets had always been messy, amorphous colloidal things that infiltrated every chink and crack in his foundation. They stained, never coming out correctly, and formed new shapes around which other secrets navigated. This was solid, precise, stalwart, pushed into a space specifically made for its shape instead of trying to take over. It was new, a marvel, and he wept with the simplicity and dread and sheer delight.

After that, keeping other people’s secrets didn’t seem so frightening. He began to get close to people, a red-haired giggler that patrolled with him, a blue-eyed study partner, a short acquaintance from Charms Club. They offered him their secrets freely, and he stored them carefully with his horde, though they were tiny and insignificant in comparison to the ones already there.

_They join me on the full moon._

The fourth was not as clean as the third nor as messy as the second nor as all-encompassing as the first. It conflicted him- he was breaking a trust (and potentially a law, though he was not sure about that- was it a law?- he would have to find out) to the very one who gave him an opportunity to be normal. Properly wizard-normal, and if it was only for a few short years than at least he was better off than those who never got the chance at all.

But he could not tell this secret, let it go in an exhaled breath to any dirty ears who might hear it. He had never done that, not with any of the secrets he kept. Even the smallest was protected, carefully guarded, spells and locks no match for his tightly closed lips, all with not even the slightest hint that there was something hidden away.

He thought as they grew it would get easier. Tolerance was on the rise, he had disgustingly loyal friends (Hufflepuffs all, he told them once, only to have a sock shoved in his mouth, “Shut up until you’re sober, Moony!” At least it was clean.) and loving parents, perhaps even a job someday. Surely there could be no more huge secrets to compete for space.

The war disagreed.

The war started as a secret, so Remus recognized it from the very beginning. He watched it ooze through the cracks. He watched it grow from its inception in the white spaces of newsprint, in the slight pauses between spoken words. He carefully observed its brash adolescence, desperate tantrums for attention hidden behind a veneer of rebellion against the world. He tucked away his thoughts on the matter, more small secrets kept alongside James’ and Sirius’ small open hatred and Peter’s small worries. He saw the war become obfuscated, and began to worry, for he knew better than anyone that secrets thrive during the cloudy days of fear.

_We are the Order of the Phoenix._

He was given a choice this time- _would you like to? You may say no_ \- but he had been collecting secrets for practically his entire life, and said yes without thinking. What was one more thing he couldn’t talk about, one more thing he had to hide? Later, he sat on his sagging mattress and wrestled his thoughts out from their concealed corners. How was the war going to impact him, his friends, his family, his secrets?

He didn’t like the answers he had, the way even the best scenarios he could think of were still less-than-ideal and were sure to result in the destruction of at least one of the four things he held dear. Perhaps he had made the right decision in taking this on.

Two months in, Dumbledore asked him to tell one of his secrets. Remus railed against him, furious words and flailing rising up involuntarily. “How could I tell them? They won’t accept it!” He ran from the room, and his damned Hufflepuffs found him not thirty minutes later.

They brought firewhiskey, the wonderful bastards, and they stayed and drank until his secrets were gushing forth in a torrent of unrestrained words that hadn’t happened since Before.

“Dumbadore jus’ dozzen un’erstan’, y’know? He’s- He _flaunts_ ‘em. Shoves ‘em in yer _face_. Lookee here, I gotsa secret and ya bas’rds can’t sop- stop me.”

They let him rant and rave and rail, and stored all of his secrets safely next to their own. In the morning, they gave him a hangover potion and they went back to Dumbledore together. A select group, he demanded, only a very few; on condition that they keep his secret and it was not spread without his permission. And so half the Order came to know his first secret and hated him for it; “This is why,” he said lowly, emotions locked away, “I did not want this.”

The blue-eyed show-off laughed and twinkled as he talked of _necessity_ , because he was giving Remus another secret.

_Get the werewolves on our side._

He despaired. Even with those who knew (who were, he admitted, in the best positions to organize food and clothing and medicine, everything werewolf ‘packs’ would desperately need) it was an impossible task. Voldemort had promised them everything. He was bringing logic to emotional situations. There would be no winning. But his feelings were locked away, kept with the others, when Remus said “Fine,” and packed a single change of clothes and left his friends behind.

He was gone for months.

He grafted a third nature onto his wizard-normal exterior, this new werewolf-normal that was needed. He took almost everything about his life, tucked it into the spaces where his first secret had been, for that was not worthy of being called a secret here. Remus was only sporadically in contact with his friends, his family, the other Order members. His most frequent contact was with Dumbledore, perhaps once every moon cycle, where he would beg for supplies and Dumbledore would tell him who had died.

He hated it, and they hated him. They could smell his wizard-normal second skin. He could fight and roll in the mud and prowl the woods and ‘steal’ supplies all he wanted, he was still a useless untrustworthy changeling-wolf.

He left in disgrace, came back to an Order in disarray. There numbers were drastically lower, their worries much bigger than themselves. James and Lily had had their child, a wee titchy sprog, just a few months old. Remus watched the baby try to roll over, listened to James’ tight voice, heard Lily’s unspoken fear. Heard what they did not say. “Someone is giving information on us.” “We don’t know how long it’s been.” “It could be you.”

He helped them move, move again, lay protective charms and move a third time. Fought alongside James while Voldemort tried to convince him to join the Death Eaters. Was pushed out of the way by Lily as her husband refused. Fought alongside Peter Alice Sirius Gideon Fabian Emmeline Caradoc Alastor. “Where have you been?” Moved himself, James and Lily again, Edgar Bones and his family. Went to far too many funerals to count. “What were you doing?” Noticed the distrust and accusations grow in people’s eyes, for they were secrets. Remus had always been good with secrets.

_You must try harder with the werewolves._

You must not tell anyone this time, he was warned, not even those closest to you. Dumbledore only, and Aberforth if Dumbledore doesn’t answer. Remus would not have done, anyway. Everyone had enough secrets of their own by now. He would leave a week after Harry’s first birthday.

July 31st brought cupcakes decorated like Quaffles, a red-icinged baby, and laughter that had been missing so desperately from their lives. James and Lily were planning another move- “The _last_ ,” Lily growled, hunting through a box for some trinket or another, “I want to unpack!”- and considering the Fidelius. James spoke about the charm, the secret-keeper, fidgeted with his hair and revealed to everyone that he was nervous about this. “I was wondering- Secret-Keeper- Padfoot?”

Remus felt something break inside. And while Sirius was calling James a million varieties of stupid (“of course, didn’t even have to ask, Prongs,”) Remus was silently fuming.

Who had the most experience with secrets? Who had been keeping secrets since before the rest of you idiots were considering that you might not be the only human being in the universe? Who kept every secret, big and small, his or not? Who had they always said would be able to best Veritaserum without batting an eye? Remus, obviously, but let’s not ask him. He is a werewolf, you know. (Stupid Hufflepuff James with his blind loyalty. Remus would never make so critical a mistake. Stay loyal, but play to each other’s strengths. Perhaps Remus would have been in Ravenclaw if it wasn’t for the Secret.)

He left for the packs the next day, and was back three short months later. He had not made much progress, but all was moot now.

_I never suspected him._

He kept that to himself, like everything else, felt it grow until it was a Proper Secret sitting next to all the others. Outwardly “we suspected everyone, you know,” because “it had to be someone” and “look at his family.” Inwardly, he thought he was just as bad as James. Blindly loyal. So much for thinking himself above the others, enough to be a Ravenclaw. He stumbled through the week, the somber funerals and grim Prophet announcements and horrifying cheer. Somehow days started blending together. He was grateful. It was easier. Before no longer meant Before Secrets- secrets had always been there, hadn’t they? Before meant “Before They Died”. “Before Life was Over”. “Before I Was Alone.” Because that day- sitting amongst the werewolves, trying to use logic to convince them that emotions would lead them false, shocked by a small screech owl that fluttered down- that was when his secrets became skeletons in the cupboard, ghastly grins on their bony faces. Remus hated to look at them, made himself look at them. _Here are your skeletons. They are the secrets you kept and the bodies of those you loved. Look at the destruction you have caused._

I am a werewolf. James, Sirius, and Peter know. They are extremely illegal underage Animagi. They join me on full moons. We are in the Order of the Phoenix. I must get the werewolves on our side. I must try harder with the werewolves. I never suspected Sirius. 

_I mourn Sirius as much as I mourn Peter and James and Lily._

_I wish I was dead, too._


End file.
